The Morning After
by KnightedRogue
Summary: Leia is braver than she ever thought she could be on the trip to Bespin. Special birthday gift for Justine Graham. Rated for language and mention of adult themes.


_Author's Note: Happiest of birthdays to the one and only Justine Graham! Thank you for being a source of love and laughter, dear friend! Special thanks to Just-Lils for the read-through on short notice!_

* * *

Low light and a dull thrum greeted Leia Organa the morning after she first slept with Han Solo. Cool air swept over the bare skin of her shoulder and a tendril of hair fell into her eyes as they fluttered open.

He lay behind her. She could feel the heat of his body at her shoulder blade, could hear his soft exhales in punctuation to the ambient hum of the _Falcon_ 's sublight engines as she carried her crew to Bespin. When awake Han's presence was a sharp weight in her chest; asleep he was like the warmth of the blood in her veins. Not overpowering, not noticeable, but vital.

And suddenly the heat in her veins drained away.

 _He's leaving._

The pain was real, so real, like the lingering heat after a flash-burn. She'd failed herself so spectacularly, falling for his charms like the fairy-tale princess she'd never been. How could she have been so stupid? How— _how?_ —had she let her guard down long enough for him to kiss her, talk to her, touch her with such reverence that he'd stolen her words from her?

Her jaw tightened and she fought the desire to flee, the rising tide of her immediate panic. When she found the emotion too difficult to suppress, she rolled onto her other side, desperate for calm and turned to the very source of her panic.

In his sleep Han was not threatening. Slack-jawed and lax. Full lips parted. Hair in riotous disarray. He lay on his stomach, the broad expanse of his upper back open to the air of the cabin. Not a hint of tension anywhere, no sign of a second thought.

And she remembered. She remembered his hands, soft and gentle. She remembered his lips against hers, the warmth that had cascaded through her when he kissed her. She remembered his words: _it's up to you, sweetheart._

She remembered the fine haze of desire, like a drug they had created themselves. The feeling of strong arms wrapped around her so tightly that she felt like she might disappear. Her nerves as she watched his eyes, as he swept calloused fingertips down her hairline. She remembered thinking that she wanted to live for the moment, that she'd wanted to listen to her heart for once. That wanting him was enough of a reason to continue the trek to his bed, to tell him _yes,_ to let herself enjoy everything about him and them and the entire experience.

Her heartbeat began to slow, the fault lines under her skin stuttered to a halt.

It had been her choice. And she didn't regret it.

Of course she didn't regret it. She'd _loved_ it; she'd felt treasured, satisfied, like for one sparkling moment she'd been heart and blood and lungs and not just a brain, not just a desire for social change. Not just heartache.

And, _oh gods,_ he'd made her sigh, he'd made her forget. He'd made her tremble and stutter and feel free for the first time in so long. And she'd done the same to him, she knew, because he'd murmured her name against the crown of her head, her real name, not _Your Worship_ or _Your Highnessness_ but _Leia Leia Leia please Leia ..._

He'd kissed her with such naked adoration that it had rendered her speechless.

But.

She also remembered that he was leaving. She remembered that whatever this connection was, it was temporary. She remembered that her pain was inevitable, that he could care about her all he wanted but that he was determined to leave. For her safety, he'd said, for her life. Because she deserved to die however she wanted to die, not because he'd pissed off a Hutt from Tatooine.

 _I can't be the reason you're killed,_ he'd said. _You deserve so much more than that._

She didn't have a clue what she deserved. She was a murderer, a thief, a traitor. Her life meant very little in that context. But what she _wanted_ was more of Han Solo. She wanted to embrace this tenuous connection with him with everything she had. She wanted to trust him, she wanted to know him. She wanted to cultivate substance out of her lust, out of the heights and depths of her need for him.

She wanted to wake up next to him without panic.

Leia swallowed, forcing the desperation from her face as the man in front of her blinked his eyes open. No twin panic to hers, she noticed. Just softness. Happiness. Heat.

"Morning," he murmured, deep and full.

Someday, maybe, she would regret this choice. Someday she might see the errors in her logic, might berate herself for living as heart and blood and lungs and not as a brain.

But not now.

"Good morning," she said, and that was that. There was no turning back now, no denials, no fresh excuse for what she'd done with him.

"You look like you're thinking too hard," he said through a yawn.

She frowned, disconcerted by his perception. "I do not."

"Okay," he said. He shrugged one bare, tanned shoulder and Leia couldn't stop her ravenous thoughts from thinking _I want to taste that skin, I want, I want …_ "But if you're gonna lie to someone you just slept with, you should probably be better at it."

Leia wanted to be angry with him, with his flippancy and nonchalance. The fury flared to life at the edges of her mind but a curious cool dampened the effect, like ice to a bruise staving off the fire and fight.

"I am a good liar," she protested. "I lied to Vader."

"Maybe Vader doesn't know you like I do."

Her eyes met his and she realized the dark truth at the center of his assertion. He _did_ know her.

What a spectacular invasion of privacy that was.

But then again … _was it?_ Because the cold, hard truth was that he might be perceptive, and maybe he knew a little too well how women felt after sleeping with him for the first time, but anything he knew about her, she'd _let_ him know. Luke wouldn't have been able to tell she was lying. Chewie wouldn't have, Carlist wouldn't have, _no one would have._ She couldn't blame him for knowing her too well if she'd given him the opportunity.

And what had made her step into his cabin last night? What had compelled her to seek him out, to allow and even enthusiastically participate in their encounter?

She trusted him.

"I'm thinking too much," she allowed. Only to him, only because he already knew. "I feel … raw this morning."

He pressed his lips together: nodded. "You feel used?"

Did she? "No," she said, definite and strong. She knew how it felt to be used; this wasn't _that._ "Not used. Maybe a little disposable."

His eyebrows flew upward, an incredulous, almost hilarious expression on his face. "Disposable," he repeated.

She grimaced. "Poor choice of words."

"I'll say." He ran a hand over his face and lifted onto an elbow. " _Disposable._ Fuck."

He looked so outraged by the word, so personally offended, that she almost smiled.

"I'm sorry, no. I should have said something else. _I'm very aware of a certain deadline,_ maybe _._ "

"Ah," he said.

He sat up, leaned against the headboard of the bunk, bare-chested and magnificent even in the morning, even half-asleep. Leia swallowed, felt a phantom charge run through her body at the memory of his magnificence above her the night before, strong and gentle. Sweet. She hesitated to use the word _loving_ because the root of that word was dangerous, but that's how it had felt.

To her, at least.

"Regrets, huh?" he said, turning his head to look down at her.

She froze, eyes locked on his. _Regrets?_ No. Unequivocally _no._ She did not regret last night. Quite the opposite, in fact; she adored him, the way he made her feel, the physical power of sex with him, yes, but also the inevitability of it, the warmth of high expectations met, of experiencing life the way she wanted to experience it. Even if it was only a glimpse.

"No, not regret," she answered him, eager to soothe the worry on his face. She pressed a hand to his thigh beneath the sheet, an intimate gesture that was intentionally brazen. "Last night was—"

She trailed off, struggling to find the right word. _Transcendent? Enlightening? Powerful?_ It had been all those things but she didn't want to scare him, didn't want to break the rules they'd so carefully established over their acquaintance. _Don't get attached. Don't show too much. Don't forget, this is a one-way street, casual, something to privately savour when he's gone._

"Special," he supplied.

Warmth bloomed in her chest. _Special._

"Yes," she said. "Special. I couldn't regret that to save my life."

He smiled at her, genuine joy written all over his face. "Me, neither. You were—"

"—I can't _believe—_ "

Their words overlapped, gobsmacked and excitable. They shared a look, almost shy, abashed at expressing too much emotion to each other. But how else to put it into words? _Good_ undersold it by a kilometer. And to know that he felt it, too, that he remembered the night as she did, as more than just a fling …

… that was what she needed to hear, to know. She felt less alone in her pleasure, somehow. Validated. Whatever this was, it was _not_ a one-way street. She had a right to feel so good about her decision. Permission to feel something, at the very least, and for the last princess of Alderaan, that permission was a complicated thing.

"So why are you thinking so hard, then?" he ventured.

A good question with an easy and terrible answer. "Because it's going to hurt even more when you leave."

What was the use of hiding it anymore? He'd called her out on it two days ago. _You want me to stay because of the way you feel about me._ And again last night: _I want you and you want me, but this is up to you. I'm done playing games._

His eyes dropped to the sheets tangled in his lap. "Yeah," he said.

Leia sat up, pulling the sheet with her to keep her breasts covered and mirrored his pose. "And to think of it hurting more now than it did before…"

"Yeah," he repeated.

"And leave to do what? To get killed by a Hutt?" she asked. "You're a fighter about everything else but in _this_ you decide to just give up?"

"It's not about _me,_ Leia," he mumbled. "It's _you_ I'm worried about."

She rolled her eyes. "You're smarter than that. I think you're scared just like I am."

He turned and Leia saw flashes of anger in his eyes, a darkening of the green. "Yes! I'm fucking terrified! Because you're gonna wind up on a bounty list and Jabba doesn't just execute people, Leia. He's not like Tarkin or Vader or the goddamned Emperor. He'll tear you to pieces in front of me, he'll burn you, he'll make you beg him to kill you and I can't handle that. I'm _not worth that._ "

"And who gets to decide that?" she asked, her voice rising. "Who gave you that right?"

Stupid man. _She_ controlled her destiny. _She_ decided what she felt and _who_ she wanted. Not him. If he wanted to sacrifice himself for her sake, she would fight that horrible notion until Bespin, if she had to.

"Leia—"

"You're _scared,_ " she said, pointing her index finger into his chest. "You're leaving because you've decided you get to decide how this goes and _that_ makes me feel disposable, yes."

He shut his mouth like a trap but his eyes were blazing hot, fire and fury and hurt.

"So I'm going to look you in the eye and tell you what I want, since you haven't bothered to ask," she said with all the gravity she could muster, all the regal weight she carried in her small body. "I don't want you to leave. I want you to ask the Alliance for help in dealing with the Hutt. I want to see where this goes, me and you, however we want to proceed but it's a _we_ decision, not a _you_ decision. I want to feel _this_ , with you, again. I want the deadline _gone._ Period."

Her courage left her in a rush, a purge of bravery and the deepest, darkest desires she had. He knew everything now. There was no going back to denial.

He listened, eyes serious and mouth drawn into a tight line. A stubborn lick of hair fell into his eyes and Leia's first instinct was to sweep it away. But she'd used all her energy to confront him and what was left was a gaping hole in her chest, devoid of energy: a tunnel burrowed into her chest cavity with dissolved, apoplectic speed and anger.

A few minutes passed, quiet and heavy. And then the only response that was just as heartening as it was horrible: "I want that, too," he said. "All of it."

She closed her eyes, shook her head helplessly. "All you have to do is stay," she whispered.

He exhaled. She felt his hand wrap around her shoulders, pulling her toward him, warm and comforting, and she looked up, met his eyes. He had no answers for her, she knew that. She fully understood his need to protect her had been a powerful motivator in his decision to go after the disastrous mission to Ord Mantell. And she hadn't yet started the process of deconstructing that for him.

But at the very least she'd been honest. She'd put her sabacc cards on the table and the rest was up to whatever randomizer operated Han Solo's trajectory.

"I can't promise anything," he whispered into her hair. "But you are nowhere near disposable."

She sighed, brought a hand up to his chest, tried to etch the feeling of him warm and alive next to her, beneath her fingers, in her memory. If she didn't win this battle, if he left to be the coward she didn't believe him to be, she would have these moments with him. It wasn't enough—would never be enough—but it's what he felt he could offer her.

"Then prove it," she whispered. A challenge: one she had every intention of winning.


End file.
